Bioprocess Engineering
Bioprocess engineering group led by Prof. Sandip Bankar is dedicated to develop efficient yet economic bioprocesses for industrially valuable biomolecules. We work in the areas of fermentation and purification of biomolecules, protein engineering for enhanced yields and metabolic engineering. The laboratory has been actively working on conversion of biomass into biochemicals, with special emphasis on improved bioprocesses for biofuels, proteins and therapeutic molecules.
Research themes
Production and downstream processing of biochemicals
Bioprocess engineering lab emphasizes on fermentative production and downstream processing of biofuels such as biobutanol, bioethanol, biodiesel and biopolymers as well as therapeutic proteins, high fiber products and rare sugars. Current research of laboratory is centered on development of simple and economic bioprocesses for biofuel production especially biobutanol.
Process development by using statistical tools, general kinetic reactions and metabolic engineering
We are working to tackle the difficulties associated with mass transfer of gaseous substrates in liquid media in bioprocesses. Our efforts also include design of continuous multistage bioreactors coupled with in situ product recovery.
Modeling and simulation for scale up studies
Laboratory research also encompasses modeling and control of continuous high-temperature short-time food processing, producing high fiber products utilizing brewer’s spent grain, fuzzy logic and neural network modeling, expert system building for food process, pilot scale enzyme crystallization, biotechnical production of rare sugar such as L-fucose and fucose polymer.
Contact information
Sandip Bankar
Assistant Professor
sandip.bankar [at] aalto [dot] fi
+358 505777898
Postal address:
P.O. Box 16100
FI-00076 Aalto
FINLAND
Visiting address:
Kemistintie 1
FI-02150 Espoo